ORIGINAL: delatbabel
ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
Soviet artillery OTOH mainly used predetermined fireplans and rolling barrages WW1 style. There is much written in memoirs etc about horrible Soviet artillery fire, and Soviet artillery was plentiful and probably made a lot of impressive noise but not very effective in causing casualties. The original War in the East book, accompanying the original boardgame, had German casualties from artillery fire on the Eastern front at 50%, while the rate for all fronts was 75-80%.
Anyone who doubts the above should have a read of Antony Beevor's book on the fall of Berlin. In the approach to the city and the battles for the Seelow Heights, the soviets had concentrations of artillery approaching 1 piece per metre of front. In the hands of a capable and organised artillery system, that sort of artillery concentration should have basically turned anything in its path to shrapnel. The soviet doctrine, which was more or less a case of fire in the general direction of anything with a german accent, was a case of quantity rather than quality.
Seelow heights was a monumental cockup for a number of reasons, I don't think this was a failure in Soviet artillery doctrine in particular. (And Beevor isn't my idea of a fit source for anything, but that's a whole other rant.)
Massive Soviet artillery did more or less flatten the Germans elsewhere -- see the Vistula-Oder operation for a much more typical example than Seelow Heights. Quantity has a quality all its own.
Also, for all of this talk about German counterbattery, the plain fact of the matter is that German artillery was being outnumbered by increasingly huge margins as the war went on. They were buried. Not a whole lot counterbattery fire can do when the enemy outnumbers you 10-1 in artillery.
